July 18: Accio Deathly Hallows (no spoilers)

You must hear this song by Hank Green, brother of YA author John Green. Performed on Wednesday, July 18th, he describes his need for the new Harry Potter book. My favorite line - "I need Harry Potter like a grindylow needs water" - sing it Hank!

#8 Bloglines account

Ok, I created a Bloglines account. It was really easy. I think the hardest part would be waiting for the validation email, which seemed to take forever. The Bloglines tutorial was really well done and easy to follow.

I don't watch that much television and rarely get to see the news, so I'm always checking news sources online. Bloglines will be my new best friend. One sign in to see them all. Hmmm.. sounded a little Tolkienesque there. I'll be watching for that little orange RSS symbol all the time now.
http://www.bloglines.com/public/cbeach

#7 Elluminate Web Conferencing

My children are homeschoolers. They "attend" a charter school online. This is not to say that they don't have books, but many of their tests and some of their lessons are taken on computer. Their lessons are planned out and they sign in to see what they are to accomplish each day. Elluminate is a technology where students can "enter a room" with their teacher and other students of their grade level to have a class online. The teacher moderates and teaches the lesson often with Power Point and the students can "raise their hand" and ask questions, answer questions, etc. They can communicate through a chat like function similar to what the librarians do in IS with Know it Now or they can speak through a microphone and the entire class can hear them. It is quite fascinating with applications for business as well as education.

#6 Spell with Flickr

Spell with Flickr is a tool to create text with images from Flickr. I played around with it and created a new page element for my blog title. Took me a bit to figure out how to get it onto the page, but patience will out.

So far so good

Ok, I've started and I must admit it hasn't been too painful as yet. I enjoyed the section on life long learning. I think most librarians are life long learners. We are exposed to so many new and interesting ideas everyday that it is hard not to be.

Creating the blog couldn't have been easier. The hardest part was deciding what to put on it!

Flickr is really neat. I found it fairly easy to navigate. There were a couple of bumps in the road when I realized I didn't title the upload correctly, but a quick call to the ever helpful Mrs. Berger and I was back on track once again. Thank you Louisa!

Logan Gabriel Walker

Logan Gabriel Walker
Originally uploaded by Beach Blog

Let me introduce you to Logan Gabriel Walker. He is my beautiful new grandson. He was born on June 19th. I took this picture the very next day.

Look Ma, I have a Blog!

I'm just so darn proud! I'm movin' on down that techie highway!